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Overview of Course Resources

This readings overview is provided as an openly-available list of all readings  for this course. Current registered students should access the official required readings for this course using the link provided in each Unit below the readings menu, or in Moodle as some slight changes to readings or instructions pertaining to sections could change as the course progresses.

UNIT 1: OVERVIEW & REVIEW OF CROSS-CUTTING TOPICS (Weeks 1 & 2)

Required Readings

  1. Week 1: read at least two of the following resources below on cross-cutting themes, choosing different theme areas. You may wish to come back to some of these readings throughout the course.
  2. Read the Executive Summary in: Moser, S., Coffee, J., and Sevile A. (2017) Rising to the Challenge, Together: A Review and Critical Assessment of the State of the US Climate Adaptation Field. Kresge Foundation, 106 pp.
  3. Read the Executive Summary of Canada’s Changing Climate Report for a high level overview of climate change in Canada and global context. In: Bush, E., Gillett, N., Bonsal, B., Cohen, S., Derksen, C., Flato, G., Greenan, B., Shepherd, M., & Zhang, X. (2019). Canada’s Changing Climate Report: Executive Summary.Environment and Climate Change Canada. 
  4. Skim the topics in the ClimateData.ca Learning Zone and the ClimateData.ca Sector Modules (click on sector in the top menu). Read at least one learning zone article and at least one resource in one of the sector modules. This is a required reading this week mostly so that you are aware of it for your own future reference. Plenty of the articles here will be helpful OPTIONAL readings in later weeks depending on your interests and background, though we will be leaving it up to you to go back to and draw upon this resource as needed.

The following resources on cross-cutting themes may be of interest throughout the course. Aside from the requirement above to read at least two they are all optional readings.

CLIMATE ANXIETY
SYSTEMS AND PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
  • Reyers, B., Moore, ML., Haider, L.J. et al. The contributions of resilience to reshaping sustainable development. Nat Sustain 5, 657–664 (2022). – This resources provides a perspective about how complex public policy can be, and connects public policy to systems thinking.
  • Colding, J., and S. Barthel. 2019. Exploring the social-ecological systems discourse 20 years later. Ecology and Society 24(1):2. This provides an overview of the history of systems thinking, approaches to modeling systems, and the multi-disciplinary spread of the concept.
  • Cairney, P. (2013, November 1). Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems. Blog and podcast that introduces you to the evolution of systems thinking within the inter-disciplinary field of social-ecological studies, providing you with ways to consider the systems within which climate and adaptation processes operate.
  • Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S. R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C. A., Folke, C., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Mace, G. M., Persson, L. M., Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B., & Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347 (6223), 1259855. Note: The original, open access paper on Planetary Boundaries is: Rockström, Johan, et al. “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Ecology and Society, vol. 14, no. 2, 2009, 32 pp.
EQUITY
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE & DECOLONIZATION

Unit 2 Earth & Climate Systems (Week 3)

Required Readings

  1. Table 1 in Bush, E., Bonsal, B., Derksen, C., Flato, G., Fyfe, J., Gillett, N., Greenan, B.J.W., James, T.S., Kirchmeier-Young, M., Mudryk, L., Zhang, X. (2022): Canada’s Changing Climate Report in Light of the Latest Global Science Assessment. Government of Canada. Ottawa, ON. 37p.
  2. In: IPCC (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis read Section A including all three Figures SPM.1, 2, and 3 in the Summary for Policymakers. Pay attention to the carefully crafted  summary statements in each section of this report and notice how the bullets below them support these statements with additional details. Also pay attention to any apparent differences or contradictions between this and the other two readings in this unit. We will cover the rest of this document in coming weeks so this would be a useful reading if you wanted to read ahead.
  3.  In: IPCC (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis read Box TS.1 | Core Concepts Central to This Report in the Technical Summary. We will cover additional sections of this document in coming weeks as well.

Additional resources

  1. To go even more in depth on specific topics use the general statements in the Summary and Technical Summary to follow them to the underlying sections in the full report. For example, to see how content on specific topic can be spread throughout the full report, see the Guide to Paleoclimate in AR6 by the Past Global Changes project (PAGES).
  2. This video for the Agricultural Climate Adaptation Research Network. (2019, July 24) provides a review of historical climate variability in space and time. It is Part 1 of a three Part series that are required in later units.

Unit 3 CLIMATE SCENARIOS (WEEK 4)

Required Readings

  1. Watch this video with a focus on the first 11 minutes, which uses BC as an example of changes encompassed by different emissions scenarios, and what that means for some projected impacts by 2050s under: Agricultural Climate Adaptation Research Network. (2019, July 24). Module 1, Pt 2 – Using Future Climate Projections.
  2. In: IPCC (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis read Section B in the Summary for Policymakers 
  3. In: IPCC (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis read Infographic TS.1: Climate Futures and Figure TS.6 | A graphical abstract for key aspects of the Technical Summary

Additional Reading

  1. For a technical background on Shared Socio-economic Pathways read: Riahi, K. et al. (2017). The shared socioeconomic pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview. Global Environmental Change, 42, Jan 2017, 153-168.

Unit 4 Climate Models: Estimating Future and Regional Impacts

Required – Week 5

  1. For a brief plain language description of how climate models work watch Katherine Hayhoe’s “Global Weirding” 8-minute video on climate models
  2. In: IPCC (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basisread Sections C and D in the Summary for Policymakers. 
  3. In: IPCC (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basisread Cross-Section Box TS.1: Global Surface Temperature Change in the Technical Summary

Required – Week 6

  1. Read the Climate-Resilient Buildings And Core Public Infrastructure Report: Plain language summary focusing on section 5 – methodology.  Optionally for more technical detail you may also wish to refer to section 2.1 through 2.4 on the modelling used in the Climate-Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure: an assessment of the impact of climate change on climatic design data in Canada.
  2. Read the abstract and if you’re feeling adventurous skim the discussion (do not worry about the technical details) paying attention to the overall goals and implications of the work. Make a note of any vocabulary in the paper you would like to discuss in the live session, glossary or Q&A discussion forum. You do not need to follow the details of this paper, but do make note of what you think the main take-aways from this paper are that a decision-maker would need to know about.High-Resolution Statistical Downscaling in Southwestern British Columbia.Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 56, 6, 1625–1641, doi:10.1175/JAMC-D-16-0287.1

Optional additional resources

  • Fischer, E.M., Sippel, S. & Knutti, R. Increasing probability of record-shattering climate extremes. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 689–695 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01092-9
  • Review Chapter 6 of the MIT Climate Science Interactive module (or read the PDF version, the last section of Part 2). From: Kerry, E. (2020). Climate Science, Risk & Solutions: Climate Science for Everyone. climateprimer.mit.edu.
  • Hayhoe, K., Edmonds, J., Kopp, R. E., LeGrande, A. N., Sanderson, B. M., Wehner, M. F., & Wuebbles, D. J. (2017). Climate models, scenarios, and projections. In D. J. Wuebbles, D. W. Fahey, K. A. Hibbard, D. J. Dokken, B. C. Stewart, & T. K. Maycock (Eds.), Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I, U.S. Global Change Research Program, pp. 133-160, doi: 10.7930/ J0WH2N54. 

Unit 5 Projected Biophysical Impacts (week 7)

The first reading gives a high level overview (from the IPCC assessment report) of projected biophysical impacts of climate change. The next reading is the section in Canada’s Changing Climate report on past and future changes throughout the various regions of Canada. While reading, pay attention to the similarities and differences between the information in sections 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4 of this report and the previous reading. The final reading is a Summary for Policymakers from a UN report by a different group than the IPCC – the IPBES which focuses on the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Pay particular attention to the differences in emphasis on impacts between the IPCC and IPBES reports.

Required

  1. IPCC (2021): Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basisread Table 12.2 in Chapter 12: Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessmentand skim the chapter for information on impacts of interest.
  2. Read Chapter 8.In: Bush, E., Gillett, N., Bonsal, B., Cohen, S., Derksen, C., Flato, G., Greenan, B., Shepherd, M., & Zhang, X. (2019). Canada’s Changing Climate Report.Environment and Climate Change Canada.
  3. Read Key Messages A-D inThe global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services: Summary for policymakers. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Secretariat (2019). 60 pp.

Additional readings

  1. Read the Preface, Reader’s Guide and Summary for Decision-Makers, paying attention to Figure A, Figure B, Table 1 and Figure 13: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis.Island Press, Washington, DC.
  2. Beusch, L., Nauels, A., Gudmundsson, L. et al.Responsibility of major emitters for country-level warming and extreme hot years. Commun Earth Environ 3, 7 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00320-6
  3. Krosby, M., Michalak, J., Robbins, T.O., Morgan, H., Norheim, R., Mauger, G., and T. Murdock. 2016. The Washington-British Columbia Transboundary Climate-Connectivity Project: Identifying climate impacts and adaptation actions for wildlife habitat connectivity in the transboundary region of Washington and British Columbia. Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington.

Unit 6 Using Climate Projections / Climate Services

  1. Module 1, Pt 3 – Using Future Climate Projections– This video is part 3 of the YouTube video assigned earlier in the course which gives guidance and best practices to practitioners from a regional climate service provider. Pay attention to how the video addresses both information that listeners need to be aware of as well as how the speaker describes what to expect in this field.
  2. Read the executive summary and at least one section of either of the following two reports. The Vancouver Coastal Health report is focused on buildings while the Metro Van report is more general. Pay attention in particular to the key findings and how the information in the rest of the report supports them.
  1. IPCC (2021): Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis read Cross-Chapter Box 12.2 | Climate Services and Climate Change Information in Chapter 12: Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment– paying particular attention to anything from this that hasn’t been addressed in the first two readings or anything that contradicts what you saw and read there.
  2. Return to the ClimateData.ca Learning Zone article(s) that you read in week 2 and reflect upon how the material lands for you now compared to then. You may optionally post about this in the discussion forum if you would like to share your thoughts about it.

Weeks 8-9 Optional additional Readings & Resources

Week 10: Optional additional readings